What is paternal postnatal depression and how common is it?

Paternal postnatal depression (PPND) affects approximately one in ten fathers in the months following birth, with rates rising to around one in four when the birthing parent is also experiencing postnatal depression. It presents differently from maternal postnatal depression — more frequently as irritability, anger, social withdrawal, and increased alcohol use than overt sadness. Because these presentations are not typically associated with depression in clinical training, PPND is frequently missed. Validated screening tools including the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale have been validated in fathers and can assist identification.

How can I raise the question of paternal mental health at a GP appointment?

At any GP or maternal and child health appointment in the perinatal period, ask explicitly: 'Can we do a mental health check for both of us?' If your GP is not familiar with paternal postnatal depression screening, the Beyond Blue Perinatal Mental Health resources and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale are standard starting points. The Movember 'More Than a Provider' report includes specific recommendations for workforce training in perinatal settings — your GP can access these.

3 in 5 new dads never asked about their mental health

What the report found

Movember’s ‘More Than a Provider’ report, released this month and backed by Dan Repacholi MP, Australia’s Special Envoy for Men’s Health, surveyed more than 1,200 Australian fathers of children aged zero to ten. The headline finding: three in five new dads — 60 per cent — were never asked about their mental health by a health professional in the year after their baby was born. One in five reported feeling extremely isolated after having a child.

If you have a partner who became a parent in recent years, or you are in that period yourself, this figure probably does not surprise you. The perinatal healthcare architecture is built around the birthing parent. Antenatal appointments, maternal and child health visits, GP check-ups — the clinical gaze follows the person who is gestating and feeding. The other parent is frequently in the room, and frequently not asked how they are doing.

That oversight has measurable clinical consequences. The research on paternal perinatal depression is unambiguous: it exists, it is clinically significant, and it is systematically undertreated. A 2025 scoping review on screening measures for perinatal mental health in fathers, published via PMC, found consistent evidence that validated screening tools are both feasible and acceptable in fathers, and that routine screening is implementable in perinatal care settings. The tools exist. The ask is not happening.

The reason matters too. Paternal postnatal depression presents differently from its maternal counterpart — more frequently as irritability, social withdrawal, increased alcohol use, and disengagement than as overt sadness. These presentations do not align with the clinical training most GPs received around depression in the perinatal period. A man presenting as flat and withdrawn after having a baby may be identified as tired rather than unwell. That misread compounds. Untreated paternal depression affects parenting quality, relationship stability, and child developmental outcomes — evidence that a Cochrane-registered meta-review on paternal perinatal mental illness instruments, available via PMC, identifies as a central driver for closing the screening gap now.

The both-and

The Movember report, and Repacholi’s backing of routine mental health screening for new fathers, sits in a context worth naming on both sides.

On one side: the advocacy is well-grounded and the timing makes clinical sense. The perinatal period is one of the few moments in adult male life when men are reliably and consistently in the health system — they are in GP waiting rooms, maternal and child health centres, and hospital birth suites. As Mirage News coverage of the report notes, men rarely seek mental health support proactively, but respond when asked. The clinical logic is not complicated: the man is in the waiting room, sleep-deprived, identity-shifting, and — one in five of the time — feeling isolated. The ask takes two minutes. Not asking is a missed opportunity that is difficult to recover later, because men disengage from the health system at an accelerating rate as the perinatal window closes.

On the other side: making the ask routine requires a workforce equipped to respond. A positive screen for paternal postnatal depression is not a standalone clinical event; it opens a care pathway that must exist and be staffed. The PMC meta-review identified workforce capacity and training as the primary implementation barriers to routine paternal screening — practitioners frequently lack the training or confidence to engage new fathers around mental health, and referral pathways for PPND are less developed than those for maternal postnatal depression. Screening that generates findings with no reliable response can do harm as well as good: a screen that identifies distress and then routes it nowhere communicates its own message.

The advocacy win — making the ask routine — needs to be followed immediately by the service design win: making the response reliable. These are sequential, not simultaneous.

2 cents

If you are in the perinatal period — or your partner is — there is one concrete action available this week.

At your next GP or maternal and child health appointment, name the question explicitly: can we include a mental health check for both of us? The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale has been validated in fathers. It is ten questions. It can be completed in the waiting room. The conversation it opens is more clinically valuable than the score it produces — the score is a starting point, not a verdict.

The system is not yet reliably making this ask. The gap documented in the Movember report is structural, not an individual clinician’s failure. But you can prompt the ask. That is not ideally your job — it should be the system’s responsibility — and also, right now, you can make it happen.

This is general information — the Edinburgh Scale is a screening tool, not a diagnostic instrument, and what follows a positive screen is a clinical conversation specific to your picture. Your GP is the appropriate person to guide that conversation.

Verdict

Verdict: yes — worth knowing about.

Three in five new Australian fathers being never asked about their mental health is a well-documented structural gap with real clinical consequences. The perinatal period is one of the few reliable moments men are in the health system. The practical action is naming the question at your next GP or midwifery appointment. The validated tools exist. The ask is not being made. It can be prompted.